April 19 - Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are involved in a confrontation with police. Tamerlan is killed and Dzhokhar escapes. After an all day manhunt,Dzhokhar is captured by police.

May 6 - Three young women and a six-year-old girl are rescued from a house in Cleveland, Ohio. The three women had been held captive in the house by Ariel Castro for between nine and 11 years and endured rape and brutal physical abuse.

June 9 - The Guardian and Washington Post disclose former Booz Allen contract employee Edward Snowden as their source for the intelligence related information recently published. Both published stories revealing the existence of PRISM, a program they say allows the NSA to extract the details of customer activities -- including "audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents" and other materials -- from computers at Microsoft, Google, Apple and other Internet companies.

June 26 - The Supreme Court rejects parts of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in a 5-4 decision, dismissing an appeal over same-sex marriage on jurisdictional grounds and ruling same-sex spouses legally married in a state may receive federal benefits. It also rules that private parties do not have standing to defend California's voter-approved ballot measure barring gay and lesbian couples from state-sanctioned wedlock. The ruling clears the way for same-sex marriages in California to resume.

July 30 - Pfc. Bradley Manning, on trial for leaking military information to the WikiLeaks website, is acquitted of aiding the enemy, but found guilty on 20 other counts, including violations of the Espionage Act. In August, he is sentenced to 35 years in prison.

August 1 - Cleveland kidnappings suspect Ariel Castro pleads guilty to the charges against him and is sentenced to life in prisonplus 1,000 years. Just over one month later, he commits suicide in his prison cell.